Trevor Phillips is an experienced champion of minority rights in the United Kingdom. He was born in London in 1953 of black immigrant parents and educated at Imperial College London. He is a former chairman of the UK’s Commission for Racial Equality and then of its successor the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Mr Phillips suffers from one handicap, however, in the eyes of certain people on the hard Left: while espousing rights for minorities he has not suspended the use of his intelligence, nor lost a sense of the practical and the proportionate. Therefore he has been to the fore in rejecting a dangerously loose and ideologically partisan definition of “Islamophobia” by the UK parliament’s ‘All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’. That ‘definition’ states:
“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
Now, I can see where the framers of this definition are coming from; but they, however, cannot see where anyone who disagrees with them is coming from. Any intelligent and impartial person can see the problem with the definition proposed, but it has nevertheless been adopted by important actors on the UK political scene, including the Liberal Democrats Party and the principal opposition party in the United Kingdom, the Labour Party.
It is this same Labour party which recently suspended Trevor Phillips from membership for none other than “Islamophobia” and “racism”. No doubt the Labour Party is deploying the catch-all definition cited above.
That there are serious philosophical and psychological problems with politics in the United Kingdom is made abundantly clear by this incident. It is just the latest manifestation of the triumph of the mindset and belief system called political correctness.
Another manifestation of reductio ad absurdam inevitably spawned by Political Correctness is the clash between the feminists and the transgender lobbies. Viz men “self identifying” as women and so able to prey with impunity upon women in places ordinarily reserved for women.
This mindset is manifestly factious, self defeating and dangerous. It is a thoroughly Marxist mindset. It is Materialist and so Atheistic, espousing a Man centred and Man derived Moral Code based on the Enlightenment’s doctrine of Equality and Rights. To ensure the triumph of the Creed, the State mechanism is to be captured by an enlightened Elite, expert in the Creed which must be imposed on the vast, unenlightened majority. All means are legitimate because the End is so manifestly Just and Morally Right.
The means include new Laws and Rules. Such laws and rules establish the distinction between the Sinners and the Righteous; the law breakers and the ideologically pure; the politically Criminal and the ideologically Good.
But to draft Laws and Rules you must have DEFINITIONS.
Definitions, of course, cannot be trusted to the Ideologically Unwashed – the Infidel unbelieving whose eyes have not been opened to the New Morality. So when the Ideologically Pure have a definition they like, they must impose it. To impose it they deploy the classic weapons of the totalitarian mindset- stigmatising opponents as immoral and inhuman; eliminating the opportunities for free discussion and debate; presenting their own extreme agenda as normal and commonplace while portraying opponents as extreme.
Which brings us back to Mr Phillips and the manifest victimisation for offending against the Purity of the Faith.
It brings us also to a new force for this outmoded and discredited agenda: the nascent Counter Extremism Commission.
This body has been deliberating a DEFINITION for extremism for at least 2 years – undoubtedly at considerable expense to the public purse, namely ordinary taxpayers. Learned papers have been commissioned. To date nothing satisfactory has emerged, however. But this has not stopped them widening the scope of what they want to do by talking in their last report [October 2019] about “hateful extremism”. [Remember, ‘Extremism’ remains un-defined, although they are quite clear what they want it to mean!]
Armed with this novel definition, they now proceed to target the people whom they have already decided are the real extremists, namely anyone on the Right of politics. “Right wing” of course also defies their attempts at DEFINITION, but they are working on it and they have a number of tentative identifying descriptions – all manifestly born in the stable of their politically correct worldview and as dangerous and inadequate as the APPG definition for “Islamophobia”.
It is truly disturbing that the Counter Extremism Commission categorises as extremist anyone who expresses outrage at the criminality of Islamic extremism. There are, indeed, people the Commission chooses to identify as “extreme Right” who are conspiring to commit violence. But the Commission fails to realise that rising willingness to use violence by certain minority white groups is a direct reaction to Islamist terror attacks and the systematic, appalling and disgraceful abuse of young white women by gangs of Pakistani men.
Such grooming gangs do not figure, however, in discussion of the novel “hateful extremism” in the commission’s report last October. But a Christian sect called the Plymouth Brethren, a group with a strict understanding and practice of their faith, does get mentioned.
Sara Khan’s Counter Extremism Commission is quite content to exclude the gross provocation and criminality of certain Pakistani men over many years in several towns across the country. Yet it singles out a strict religious group with no connection to terrorism as suspect and worthy of further investigation. Telling.
There is manifestly something wrong here. And it arises from the psychology inherent in the politically correct mindset. A mindset which actively seeks to eradicate our traditional culture and morals, our political and constitutional traditions.
The politically selected Supreme Court manifest this insidious mentality when it declared the perfectly constitutional prorogation of parliament by Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year as un-constitutional in its decision on the 2nd Miller case, 24th September 2019.
The Supreme Court did not like what a Brexit Prime Minister might do … despite the mandate given in the 2016 Referendum and in the 2017 General Election. So it invented a wholly new and unconstitutional DEFINITION as to what was constitutionally acceptable.
We must reject this insidious and ideological way of thinking.
We need to re-establish our traditional conceptions and understanding of liberty, inherent in the English tradition since Magna Carta of 1215 and particularly the constitutional Settlement dating from the late 17th century.
England had a Bill of Rights a full century before the French Revolution and the Enlightenment Declaration des Droits de l’homme et du citoyen. England had a monarchy constitutionally defined and constrained by its Parliament from 1689. And the beginnings of a free press and general freedom of belief and expression date from the 1690s when parliament declined to renew the Licensing of the Press Act.
Increasing liberalisation flowed from the Protestant Christian constitutional monarchy established under William and Mary in the 1690s. This constitutional settlement established the foundation and framework on which the liberalising reforms in British politics, society and economy in the next two centuries became possible.
It saved Britain from the extremes of violent revolution subsequently seen on the continent of Europe …
Why then are the modern Materialist Ideologues undoing all the good work ?
Because they have a new god and a new religion which they pursue with the fervour of an apostolic Cult.
In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke identified this cult as “atheistical fanaticism“, and wrote about its conscious intention to eradicate Christianity.
This is the underlying tension in our contemporary politics: the persecution of Trevor Phillips is but the latest manifestation.
“Ray” Catlin
For a comprehensible and accessible edition of Edmund Burke’s critical statement of conservatism in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, see “CORE CONSERVATISM: Edmund Burke’s Landmark Definition” published by Westbow Press and available from Amazon at
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Core+Conservatism&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
For all the relevant details and a thorough review of the Labour Party suspension of Trevor Phillips, including a must see “Afterword” by a leading Muslim, see the Policy Exchange report at
https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/the-trial-the-strange-case-of-trevor-phillips/
For the Counter Extremism Commission report cited above, go to
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/challenging-hateful-extremism
For the ruling of the Supreme Court in the 2nd Miller case mentioned above, go to
https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2019-0192.html
For explanation of the blatantly un-constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court in Miller, see the assessment by Professor John Finnis at https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-unconstitutionality-of-the-Supreme-Courts-prorogation-judgment.pdf
ends
Click to access The-unconstitutionality-of-the-Supreme-Courts-prorogation-judgment.pdf
Click to access The-unconstitutionality-of-the-Supreme-Courts-prorogation-judgment.pdf
Click to access The-unconstitutionality-of-the-Supreme-Courts-prorogation-judgment.pdf
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